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Discimus ut serviamus:
We learn so that we may serve.
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Walking for Freedom
The college is launching a Homecoming tradition that celebrates our nation’s freedoms and helps us reflect on our motto, “We learn so that we may serve.” On Saturday, October 14 at 2:15 pm, alumni, faculty, students, staff, and friends are invited to participate in a Freedom Walk around a section of the Quad that will be decorated with flags bearing the names of members of the military, police officers, firefighters, civil rights advocates, and any individual who has served humanity. If you would like to honor someone with a flag,
click here
.
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Jane Breskin Zalben ’71
(left) is the author of over 50 children’s books; Else Holemund Minarik ’42 was the author of the popular children’s book series
Little Bear
, which was illustrated by Maurice Sendak; David A. Adler ’68 has written close to 200 books for children and young adults, including the popular
Cam Jensen
series.
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Library to Showcase the
Best of the Faculty
The Rosenthal Library will be showcasing the faculty’s publications from the founding of the college to the present in the Barham Rotunda gallery from October 2 through February 2, 2018. All faculty--full-time and adjunct, current and past--are invited to lend their most important work, in any format or medium, for display. Interested? Submit your work to the QC Art Library, Rosenthal 601, by
Monday, September 25 at 7:30 pm
. Each submission must include your full name and department and a short blurb about yourself and your work. A catalog will accompany the exhibition. You can drop your items off Monday–Friday, 9 am–5 pm, or the library will pick them up on campus if you contact them at
artlibrary@qc.cuny.edu
; 73770;
suzanna.simor@qc.cuny.edu
/73771; or
donna.schultz@qc.cuny.edu
/3770). For more information:
artlibrary@qc.cuny.edu
.
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New Faculty
Dustin Grella (left) has written and mailed himself a letter every day for the past 15 years. Deborah Gruber’s grand passions are Francophone Jewish Arab writers and flying airplanes. Jun Young Choi has received the Robert M. Sandelman Award for Scientific Excellence. What do these three have in common? They are all recently hired members of our faculty. To learn more about them and other new faculty,
click here.
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Keeping the Dream Alive
Many undocumented college students are benefiting from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Its future is now up to Congress. A good source of information for Dreamers and their supporters can be found at the CUNY Citizenship Now
website
. A recent statement from President Félix V. Matos Rodríguez supporting these young women and men can be found
here
.
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A Closer Look at Trump and Other Noteworthy Events
As part of the college’s celebration of its 80th anniversary, the Political Science Department will present a series of lectures looking at
Politics in the Age of Trump
. The series starts on Wednesday, September 27 at 12:15 pm when Michael Krasner will address how Trump won the presidency, how he is governing, and where he will go from here. Upcoming on October 18 will be a lecture on “Trump & Immigration” by Queens Borough President Melinda Katz. All the lectures are free.
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Share Your Memories at the Queens Memory Website
Whether you’re a recent arrival in the borough or a long-time resident, no doubt you’ve captured some vibrant memories of your Queens life in photos, news clippings, and other materials. Thanks to an improved website and a new mobile app, it’s now even more convenient to send your personal materials to
Queens Memory
. This program at the Queens Library was begun in 2010 as a community oral history project by QC graduate Natalie Milbrodt while she was conducting independent study and earning her master’s degree in Library and Information Science at QC.
Read more
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The Best Way to Stay on Top of the Weather
The weather outside has been frightful, and we are only in the middle of the hurricane season with winter still to come.
Click here
for the best way to stay on top of the weather and learn of possible college closings.
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Building Better Lives for Clients and Psychology Careers for Students
For children and families who’ve escaped brutal regimes, the horrors don’t always end with their arrival in America. “We’ve treated torture victims as well as minors who were traumatized in their native lands and abused during the trip to join their parents here,” said Yvette Caro, director of the Queens College Psychological Center (QCPC). “Some face poverty; new, complicated family relationships; the asylum process and, recently, the fear of deportation.”
Serving refugees is an especially strong focus thanks to Youth in Transition, a collaborative program begun in 2016 with Psychology Professor Valentino Nikulina. Created specifically for immigrant youth and their families, the program offers free services in English and Spanish.
QCPC helps not only immigrants but others struggling to cope with problems. Established in 2010 with Caro as its founding director, this community mental health clinic and education center is committed to serving economically disadvantaged children, teens, adults and older adults. The cost ranges from free to a sliding fee scale.
“Everyone can improve the quality of their life,” said Caro. Help includes individual counseling, family and couples therapy, grief management, parental skills training, improving children’s behavioral problems and many other services.
Read more.
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John Wykoff '06
Last fall, when the Missouri State University Chorale was invited to sing at the presidential inauguration, the chorale’s director, Cameron LeBarr, asked John Wykoff, MA ’06, to compose the music. The result, completed before the election, was “Now We Belong”; its lyrics, by poet Michael Dennis Browne--himself a naturalized citizen--embrace all people and celebrate the process of immigrants turning into Americans.
Broadcast live and subsequently showcased on websites across the political spectrum, the song provided a unifying element in an otherwise highly polarized event. “I don’t view an inauguration as about the individual,” says Wykoff, assistant professor of music theory and composition at Lee University in Cleveland, TN. “The words were so fitting. The welcome-to-the-stranger theme felt right in that context.”
Wykoff chose his career early, without the intensive formal training given to most future composers. He grew up in Las Vegas, the fifth of seven children. “Music ran deep in my home,” he recalls. “We sang a lot as a family. My dad played piano.” While Wykoff’s older siblings studied piano, he, ironically, did not. Undaunted, he picked up the instrument on his own and learned the basics of music theory from a book his father gave him.
At Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA, Wykoff got his first piano lessons. “There was a lot of work to be done,” he says. He completed a bachelor’s degree in music and philosophy, married an organist, and moved to Queens with her so he could attend graduate school. “You could say that [composer] George Perle brought me to QC,” Wykoff observes. “I had a deep interest in his work, and I knew he had taught at the college.”
Wykoff thoroughly enjoyed his time at the Aaron Copland School of Music and remains grateful to its faculty, citing many by name without being prompted. “Bruce Saylor was a terrific mentor for me by his example, and I thrived under his teaching,” says Wykoff, who continued at the CUNY Graduate Center for his doctorate. “Jeff Nichols was a brilliant teacher. Bill Rothstein showed me what musical scholarship looks like. Ed Smaldone gave me great teaching opportunities. I had wonderful conversations with David Schober about Perle.
“I did get to meet Perle once in his home,” continues Wykoff. “I had found a wrong note in one of his scores and thought I might impress him with how well I understood his music! But he was in the twilight of his long life, and he was past discussion of trivialities with young showoffs. Still, it was a memorable winter afternoon.”
Wykoff has equally fond memories of New York City. “My wife and I lived in Astoria,” he says. “We miss walking down a street and hearing 15 different languages. We enjoyed our encounters with people from other countries. The food! We used to joke about smelling the world. And I miss the opera. I’m always thinking about the Met.”
Wykoff hopes someday to revisit that destination--as a composer. “I don’t just do choral music,” he explains. “I love to write chamber music, for example. While the International Contemporary Ensemble was in residence at Lee, they played some of my work. The Enso String Quartet premiered my piano quintet. But I dream of writing an opera.”
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Distinguished Professor Morris Rossabi’s latest work,
How Mongolia Matters: War, Law, and Society
dispels some of the myths concerning Mongolians and other Inner Asian peoples. This volume, edited by Rossabi, challenges the depictions of these mostly nomadic pastoral groups as barbaric plunderers and killers, while not denying the destruction and loss of life they caused. Several essays are groundbreaking as they include Mongolian and other Inner Asian sources, rather than exclusively Chinese and Persian sources, thus offering new perspectives. Such research reveals the divisions among the Mongolians, which weakened them and led to the collapse of their empire.
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Professor of History Leo Hershkowitz, who died on August 10, came to Queens College in 1960 and retired in 2012. Here, Frank Warren shares his thoughts on his esteemed colleague: During those more than 50 years, his gentle kindness and whimsical sense of humor made him a popular colleague. Always eager for his students to understand the pleasures of doing history and the rewards of historical discovery, he would introduce them to some of the byways he had explored. This meant that on more than one occasion in his survey courses he would still be exploring the Jacksonian era when the class ended with the Civil War.
Read more.
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Office of Communications and Marketing.
Comments and suggestions for future news items
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are welcome.
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